It was said that Barrios was the first
to perform Bach's Lute Suites on guitar. Ever since that, they remained to
be the most treasured pieces in classical guitar repertoire. Every
serious player or student will probably own several versions.
These works are also deservedly recorded
extensively by guitarists. Among all the great recordings, my favorite is
Göran
Söllscher’s groundbrea king recording with his Altgitarre
on Deutsche Grammophon (DG 445 563-2). Besides his excellent interpretation
and the unique sonority of his special guitar, I found great interest in his
transcription, which is bound to be different because his guitar has 11
strings and different tuning. This interest prompted me to find out how he
played the pieces with his instrument, and eventually the realization of
this edition.
Söllscher
played Suite No.1 (BWV 996) in G minor, and No.2 (BWV 997) in C minor.
Since his guitar is tuned a minor third (3 semitones) higher than standard
guitar, it was similar to the fingering of E minor and A minor on the
standard guitar respectively. He played Suite No.3 (BWV 995) in G minor,
which is similar to E minor fingering on the standard guitar; he played
Suite No.4 in Eb major, which is similar to C major fingering on standard
guitar.
Thus, in this edition, these 4 Lute Suites
were edited in E minor, A minor, E minor and C major for 11-string guitar
with Baroque tuning (e'-b-g-d-A-E-D-C-B'-A'-G') respectively, except in
Suite No.3 which requires the 3rd string lowered to f#. Since very few notes
actually go down to the low G (11th string), the music can easily be adapted
for the more common 10-string guitar. And if you applied a capo to the 3rd
fret, you can achieve almost the same effect of Söllscher's
Altgitarre.
I tried to include Söllscher's
tastefully and stylishly done embellishments and ornamentations as
detailed as possible. Most of the fingerings should be self-explanatory and
quite easy to figure out by guitarists or students with enough skill for
Bach's work.
I hope this new Edition will provide guitar
lovers with new
insights into these important works. and will spark some interest in 10 or
11-string guitars.
Each individual piece is in both TEF
(TEFview software is free to download : www.tabledit.com/tefview),
notation (PDF), tab (PDF) and midi
formats. The entire Suites are in notation format only.
